Contents

Mission

Carl Johnson recently seized four HPV-1000 Police motorcycles to be used as outriders to escort the armored van Carl plans to use to haul the off the cash without raising suspicion to his team. His last step would be to somehow obtain an armored van and respray it with the Caligula's Casino logo, but he makes up his mind that he won't raise suspicion to his team by doing a simple carjacking. Zero gives him the idea to hijack a 'sky crane,' called a Leviathan. Carl heads over to K.A.C.C., the fuel depot in Spinybed, northeast Las Venturas. CJ penetrates the compound while keeping soldiers armed with assault rifles at bay. Carl takes down a pair of Hunters using a gun emplacement, before lifting off with the Leviathan. He heads to the depot, and using the magnetic winch attached to the helicopter, lifts an armored van and airlifts it to the airstrip in Verdant Meadows.

Mission objectives

In order to complete the mission the player must:

Steal the helicopter from the military fuel dump, the gates will open for a military vehicle

They have sent two gunships to intercept you, use the gun emplacement to destroy them

The gunships have been destroyed, get to the chopper and get out of there

Go to the depot and pick up the bank van using the helicopter's winch

Take the van to the Aircraft Graveyard in the desert

Land the helicopter in the indicated zone

Reward

The reward for completing the mission is increased Respect and the Leviathan will always spawn at the Aircraft Graveyard in Verdant Meadows unless the player has unlocked the Hunter, then it will only spawn when arriving from east.

Trivia

A special minigun with unlimited ammo is there, but a jetpack must be used to obtain it. First, use the jetpack until the game instructs you to use the gun emplacement. DO NOT REMOVE THE JETPACK. Then go to the red circle where it will show "Press RETURN to use." Use it even if the jetpack is still on. After using it, you will find yourself with a hand-held minigun with infinite ammo.

Although the game said that the guards will only open the gates for military vehicles, driving a Rhino in will still sound the alarm.

The 'sky crane' doesn't have the ability to lift a tank.

In the Movie "The Losers" the main characters, who have ex-special ops experience, need to steal a U.S. Army variant of the helicopter which the Leviathan is based off of. They imitate a crash between a routine army patrol Humvee and a civilian semi-truck. One of them calls base control and they send the aformentioned helicopter with medevac personnel to the crash sight. Once landed the 2 medics rush to the 2 "dead" characters and the 1 alive character with a fake spinal injury, who called base control. One of the main characters snipes the medics with tranquilizer darts attracting the attention of the pilots who exit the chopper and head for the crash site. Another main character, duel-weilding traquilizer guns, shoots the pilots and takes the helicopter's GPS and later straps the GPS to a rocket on a rocket launcher and fires it into the sky much to the confusion of base control. After moving their stolen helicopter to a secure and subtle location they respray it. They then use the helicopter, now armed with a magnet, to quickly take an armored van, that had valuables in it and a heavily-armed convoy escort to a hideout to crack it open and take its valuables. This is very similair to this mission where you steal a millitary helicopter and use it's magnet to steal an armored van.

Alternate solutions

There are at least three different ways of getting into the depot.

As suggested by the BradyGames official strategy book, head for the main gate, wait for a Patriot to drive through the gates, and then sneak through.

Follow the Patriot after it leaves the depot, jack it (it can be tricky to catch) and drive it through the gate.

Both the above solutions will result in Carl getting into a firefight and having to pass through a warehouse to get to the helicopter.

A third option is to head to Verdant Meadows, get the jetpack, and fly to the helipad. There will be attacks by RPGs and soldiers on the helipad, however. This method also has the disadvantage of not indicating where the gun emplacements are located. However, if the player is carrying a minigun, the two enemy helicopters can be destroyed easily and the helicopter taken.

Glitch

On the PS2 version, the L3 button, used for the hover control, does not always work. (Pressing it will simply result in the helicopter lowering to the ground). And the Right Analog control does not always work properly either, making the van pick-up portion of the mission difficult to complete.

Continuity error

Most mission cutscenes are scripted in such a way that if you haven't yet completed a particular mission that is not part of a mandatory strand, it doesn't effect the narrative. However in this mission's cutscene Zero makes a reference to fighting Berkley, which becomes meaningless if the player hasn't played Air Raid and the other missions of the Zero strand yet (in fact, the Zero missions are completely optional for completing the game, though still required for 100% completion status, so they can be played out anytime before the endgame).